“Good.”
“I understand that I didn’t know enough to hate you for the right reasons.”
My stomach dropped in one sick, swooping lurch, and I turned it into a harsh, brittle laugh. “That is the most fucked-up thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“You wanted honesty.”
“I wanted you to stop bleeding.”
“You wanted to come in here and prove you could still get close.”
I wrapped fresh gauze around his hand, yanking it snug enough to make him inhale sharply through his nose. “Maybe I came in here because I don’t like owing people.”
His eyes locked on mine, unblinking. “You don’t owe me shit.”
“You hit him for me.”
“I hit him because I wanted to.”
“Because of me.”
“Everything is because of you. That’s the problem.”
The words filled the tiny kitchen and burned through the cold air. Neither of us moved. His wrist remained inside my hand, my fingers wrapped around him while the tape dangled forgotten from the other. His chest rose and fell too close to mine, the heat of him a tangible force during one dangerous second neither of us seemed capable of breaking.
I forced myself to look down and finish the bandage, my movements quick and clinical. “Then maybe you should try harder to get over it.”
His laugh came out in a sharp, ugly bark. “Is that what you’ve been doing?”
“Yes.”
“Liar.”
I slapped the tape over the gauze, the sound too loud. “Don’t call me that.”
“You lie every time you look at me.”
I dropped his hand like it had burned me. “You don’t know anything about what it costs me to look at you.”
His expression hardened, but his eyes became hotter and darker, the gray churning like a storm. “Then tell me.”
“No.”
“Still running.”
“Still bleeding.”
“Still deflecting.”
“Still obsessed.”
His nostrils flared with one sharp, involuntary breath.
I should not have said it. The second it left my mouth, the apartment shrank around us, all that bare space and cold air collapsing into the few inches between his body and mine. The baby’s cries, the couple’s fight, and the whole ugly symphony of the building faded into a distant hum.
Easton’s voice came low and lethal, a vibration I felt inside my bones. “Say that again.”
I lifted my chin, defiance acting as a shield. “You heard me.”
